The Darkest Wolves - A.K. Koonce Page 0,37

my body begins all over again. I try to delay it. I try to ride out the slamming feel of his body thrusting against mine harder and harder, but it’s all too much. The emotions are too high.

The orgasm that he demands from me is a tightening thing as it releases me but clenches him. And that alone seems to be what gives him what he needs. I can’t think about what my body is giving him, but he takes it all the same.

And I’d give him even more if I could.

…I’d give these men everything.

It’s a terrifying thought that slips through my mind as our bodies slow but our hearts continue to soar. I wonder if they sense that heart-pounding fear that’s inside my soul all because I let myself care about these men who stormed into my life.

I don’t care. I’ll embrace that fear.

Eventually.

Roman slips from me but lingers there with his hands intimately wrapped around me from behind just as Avian lowers his head to my chest, and the three of us just breathe one another in. Our emotions are just as entangled as our bodies. It’s the most beautiful moment in time.

Until it’s not.

“What. The. Literal. Fuck,” Zilo roars before the door even slams closed behind him.

And then the moment is gone.

Fourteen

Shit

Zilo will make a very good disappointed father someday.

I know this by how fast he threw my clothes at me, pinging me in the head with a boot, and marched me right outside before the sun even warmed the horizon, ranting through his teeth the entire time.

“Find the most beautiful woman in all the realms, the fucking witch said. She’ll solve all our problems, the fucking witch said.” The man I had previously thought was a total alpha fuck is currently waving his arms around dramatically like a pack of women during a gossip fest.

I don’t say a word as he leads us a mile away from the dark castle to just behind a large barn-like structure that smells slightly like burning demonic pig shit. He stops abruptly at a large divot, and in the dim morning sunlight, I can almost make out that it’s a pond of sorts.

“You have to get the scent off.” Zilo rubs his enormous hand down his face in the slowest possible look of frustration.

My lip curls as I peer down at the muddy ravine before me. This is how they problem solve? This is really the only solution to scent masking?

“Avian and Roman don’t have to do this?” The two assholes stand in silence behind their alpha-hole leader, looking like they couldn’t even possibly know me let alone have fucked me an hour ago.

The fuckers.

Literally.

“Avian and Roman know how to shift. Your beast has its own primitive smell. Once you shift, you smell like beast. Shift. It’s that easy.” Zilo blinks at me like he expects a magic trick to be revealed.

Honestly in this moment, if I could pull a rabbit out of my vagina and call it my beast, I would.

“I fucking can’t.”

“Then. Get. In. The. Mud.” His head bobs obnoxiously.

I swallow hard. “No.”

His dark brows bounce.

“No?”

“Nnnooo,” I repeat slowly for his little puppy brain to follow along.

I note the quiet look Avian passes Roman, but still they stand back as if they have nothing to do with this fucktacular position I’m in.

They were a bit more supportive when they were happily bending me in those other positions earlier though, weren’t they?

My eyes roll hard.

Zilo’s shoulders square at the same time as his hands grip his hips, and he gives me a stern glaring at.

That’ll teach me.

Goddess, he’s such a fuc—

My feet are off the ground with a smoky puff of magic and a grunt of noise from the asshole hauling me over his shoulder and plowing me toward the ground. My nails dig into his back, his shoulders, his ass, anything to help me from smacking the hard earth.

But I never do. He keeps hold of me as we both slosh into the swamp-like mud. It’s—It’s not even mud. It’s thin like water, but clumpy with…

“Is this shit?”

“I mean…only a little,” Roman whispers so quietly I barely hear him.

“Oh. My. Fucking. Sanity.” I stiffen in Zilo’s arms as he lowers me down against him, his chest sliding disgustingly against mine.

“It’s good for you. Covers the smell.” A hint of a smile plays at the corner of Zilo’s lips, his dark beard and hair making him look devilishly handsome as he stares down at me.

“Yeah. Because I smell